How I Love Your Law!

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. (Psalm 119:97)

The great need of our generation is the knowledge of God. All of modern man’s problems can be traced to his ignorance of God. This ignorance of God is because of an ignorance of the Word of God. We must come to know God through His written Word. There is no excuse for remaining ignorant of what God has revealed. The law of God, mentioned here by the Psalmist, can be understood not only as the commandments but in a more general sense as the Word of God – everything God has spoken and revealed to mankind. What was probably in the mind of the Psalmist was the Word of God spoken at Mount Sinai. When God made His covenant with the people of Israel, God audibly spoke the words of the Law  – the Ten Commandments – directly to the people. To the people of Israel the Ten Commandments were the words of the covenant and constituted a summary of God’s Word to them. The Psalmist’s love of the law and meditation on it represents the heart of a true Jew. The first and greatest commandment was to love God with all of the heart. Loving God means loving the Word of God.

This love for the law, or Word, of God is the cry of a redeemed heart no longer in alienation from God. The Psalmist, most likely David, was a man who was far ahead of his own people and generation. As a whole the people of Israel, though they were God’s chosen nation, were not so inclined toward God and His law. In fact, the people of Israel were known for being stubborn, disobedient, and idolatrous throughout their history. The history of Israel that we have in Scripture proves this beyond any doubt. And yet, the people of Israel were no different from everyone else. The human race is also stubborn and disobedient. The Natural Man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. Humanity is alienated from God and will not submit to the Word of God. Man is born a rebel. Today we see the nations raging against God and His Word, refusing to believe and obey what God has said. But what we see today in sinful man’s rebellion against God has always been in the nature and heart of man. Unless man’s heart is changed, and he is reconciled to God, there will never be this love for God’s Word expressed by the Psalmist.

Loving God’s Word is the secret to obedience. Until there is love for God in the heart there can never be true and consistent obedience. God wants man to obey Him, but also to love Him. God desires more than slaves, He desires sons. Obedience to God must come from the heart and should not be done begrudgingly. God deserves obedience because He is God. But God also deserves to be loved by us. Love and obedience go together. Those who do not obey do not love God, even if they claim to love God. There are many who claim to love God, yet their lives betray the fact that they are not telling the truth. How easy it is to say we love God, yet love for God is proven by our obedience. And our obedience is energized by our love for God. Those who attempt to obey God simply out of a sense of duty, obligation, fear, or self-righteousness will find that the commandments of God are burdensome and contrary to their true nature. There are those who try to obey God without actually wanting to do what God says! In other words, the Word of God is not their true love and desire – there is something else that they really want. This is the heart of sinful man. The only way to love God and His Word is to be born again and receive the Spirit of Adoption into our hearts!

Perhaps an even greater obstacle for the Natural Man is understanding the word of God. How many there are who lament the fact that they cannot understand the Word of God! This should not surprise us because the Word of God is spiritual and is therefore spiritually discerned. A person who is not spiritual will not be able to understand that which is spiritually discerned. It is doubtful that an unspiritual person would even make a sustained effort to understand the spiritual things in God’s Word. The desires of the Flesh soon lead the unspiritual person away to pursue other things. The Psalmist, on the other hand, not only loves the Word of God but he also meditates upon the Word continually. Meditation, or thinking upon the Word of God, is the key to understanding. The spiritual man is a thinking man. The act of meditation has been compared to a cow that chews the cud – breaking down what is hard until the nourishment is completely digested. Unfortunately there are false religions that have taken over the concept of meditation and corrupted what actually belongs to God’s people. In pagan religions meditation is often taught as the emptying of the mind. It is just like Satan to encourage people to empty their minds because he wants to fill it with his lies. But true, spiritual meditation involves filling the mind with the Word of God. I cannot imagine that we will have any progress in understanding the Word of God unless we fill our minds with it and meditate on it continually.

In our time of great ignorance of God and His Word we need people who love the Word and meditate on it continually. The people of God must be diligent in seeking understanding. One of the reasons we gather together as the Church of God is to ignite our love for the Word of God and to aid each other in our understanding of the Word. Christian leaders are to be men and women who love the Word and meditate on it constantly themselves, so they can then teach others to do the same. There will be no revival in the Church today until there is a renewed love for the Word of God and a diligent effort to meditate upon it!